I am very pleased to announce the BETA LAUNCH of my all-new greeting-cards shop! As longtime readers know, I have in the past offered Wondermark greeting cards, and they’ve always done well, particularly around the holidays. Well, a few holiday seasons ago, they did so well that I ran into a bottleneck — myself and a houseful of assistants spent pretty much every waking hour of the month of December furiously stuffing cards into envelopes and then, agonizingly, waiting for my local print shop to churn out a new batch of this design, or that surprisingly-popular design…it was wonderful to have the business, but it was also a very anxious month as I attempted to make sure everybody’s order was filled correctly and in a timely fashion. A bug was planted in the back of my mind to figure out a better way to do this.

Well, here is my answer:

Monocle Poppers™ are high-quality greeting cards produced in my studio here in Venice, CA. Using professional giclée printing technology and archival fine-art papers, we have become a one-stop manufactory for all sorts of cards for every occasion. My interns will tell you how picky I am with this stuff — how many inks and paper stocks we’ve tested over the past six months; how long we’ve spent tweaking files and squinting at colors and teaching ourselves how to use “creasing machines,” which are a thing I did not used to know existed. I was determined to create the perfect greeting card production system, one that didn’t rely on outside vendors and one that would scale effortlessly without bottlenecks as the busy season approached. I even had custom store software developed to make things (hopefully!) as easy as possible for you to get any cards you like at any time, from one single birthday card to a million at once. And I think it’s finally time to do this.

Most importantly (to me), I’m having a ton of fun coming up with new and clever card ideas, and I’ll be releasing new designs really frequently. Here’s one you haven’t seen before (click for bigger):

These are just two of the 20+ Monocle Poppers in the greeting card shop right now! And the cool part is that you can build your own multi-packs. I was adamant on this point. When you buy multiple cards, you trigger a tiered discount system that gives you greater and greater discounts as you add more cards to your cart — up to a maximum of 50% off. So if you need one card for a birthday, great — but if you need 50 for the holidays, you can get those just as easily, and the cards are discounted accordingly.

I’m officially calling this the BETA RELEASE of the store, as we roll slowly out of the driveway on this calm, windless day, so please let me know your thoughts in the comments below — is it easy to use? How’s the navigation? Is everything clear?

I’m very anxious to start sending out cards as soon as possible, so feel free to avail yourself of our discount system and pick up some of the new designs! I have some existing stock of older designs too, so you may get a mix of new prints and old stock as I work through the inventory — but don’t worry. As you know, I’m very picky about quality and nothing leaves my hands unless it’s beautiful and delightful. NOW LET’S DO THIS